International Intervention and the Problem of Legitimacy


Book Description

In International Intervention and the Problem of Legitimacy Andrew C. Gilbert argues for an ethnographic analysis of international intervention as a series of encounters, focusing on the relations of difference and inequality, and the question of legitimacy that permeate such encounters. He discusses the transformations that happen in everyday engagements between intervention agents and their target populations, and also identifies key instabilities that emerge out of such engagements. Gilbert highlights the struggles, entanglements and inter-dependencies between and among foreign agents, and the people of Bosnia-Herzegovina that channel and shape intervention and how it unfolds. Drawing upon nearly two years of fieldwork studying in postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina, Gilbert's probing analysis identifies previously overlooked sites, processes, and effects of international intervention, and suggests new comparative opportunities for the study of transnational action that seeks to save and secure human lives and improve the human condition. Above all, International Intervention and the Problem of Legitimacy foregrounds and analyzes the open-ended, innovative, and unpredictable nature of international intervention that is usually omitted from the ordered representations of the technocratic vision and the confident assertions of many critiques.




The Democratic Coup D'état


Book Description

The Democratic Coup d'État advances a simple, yet controversial, argument: democracy sometimes comes through a military coup. Covering coups that toppled dictators and installed democratic rule in countries as diverse as Guinea-Bissau, Portugal, and Colombia, the book weaves a balanced narrative that challenges everything we knew about military coups.




The Legitimate Use of Military Force


Book Description

Throughout human history, scholars, statesmen and military leaders have attempted to define what constitutes the legitimate use of armed force by one community against another. Moreover, if force is to be used, what normative guidelines should govern the conduct of warfare? Based upon the assumption that armed conflict is a human enterprise and therefore subject to human limitations, the Western 'just war tradition' represents an attempt to provide these guidelines. Following on from the success of Hensel's earlier publication, The Law of Armed Conflict, this volume brings together an internationally recognized team of scholars to explore the philosophical and societal foundations of just war tradition. It relates the principles of jus ad bellum to contemporary issues confronting the global community and explores the relationship between the principles of jus in bello and the various principles embodied in the customary law of armed conflict. Applying an interdisciplinary approach to analyzing and assessing the links between just war and the norms of behaviour, the book provides a valuable contribution to international law, international relations and national security studies.




The Legitimacy of International Human Rights Regimes


Book Description

The past sixty years have seen an expansion of international human rights conventions and supervisory organs, not least in Europe. While these international legal instruments have enlarged their mandate, they have also faced opposition and criticism from political actors at the state level, even in well-functioning democracies. Against the backdrop of such contestations, this book brings together prominent scholars in law, political philosophy and international relations in order to address the legitimacy of international human rights regimes as a theoretically challenging and politically salient case of international authority. It provides a unique and thorough overview of the legitimacy problems involved in the global governance of human rights.




Intervention in Civil Wars


Book Description

This book investigates the extent to which traditional international law regulating foreign interventions in internal conflicts has been affected by the human rights paradigm. Since the adoption of the Charter of the United Nations, foreign armed interventions in internal conflicts have turned into a common practice. At first sight, it might seem that state practice has developed in a chaotic fashion, however on closer examination, specific patterns emerge. The book charts these patterns by examining the traditional doctrines of intervention and testing them against state practise. The book has two aims. Firstly, it seeks to clarify the current legal framework regulating interventions in internal conflicts. Secondly, it plots the emergence of new trends and investigates whether they are becoming part of positive international law. By taking this dual focus, it offers the first truly comprehensive examination of foreign interventions in internal conflicts.




Deconstructing Legitimacy


Book Description

The overthrow of Viceroy Joaqun de la Pezuela on 29 January 1821 has not received much attention from historians, who have tended to view it as a simple military uprising. Yet in this careful study of the episode, based on deep archival research, Patricia Marks reveals it to be a pivotal event in the emerging commercial conflict between liberal free-traders and protectionists that retarded the establishment of a stable national state in post-independence Peru. The overthrow of the viceroy thereby may be seen as an early manifestation of Latin American praetorianism, in which a particular sector of the civilian population, unable to prevail politically and unwilling to compromise, pressures army officers to act in order to save the state.




Legitimate Targets?


Book Description

Can international law regulate warfare? Experiences of US bombing suggests it does not solve the twenty-first-century belligerent's legitimacy dilemma.







Humanitarian Intervention


Book Description

An interdisciplinary approach to humanitarian intervention by experts in law, politics, and ethics.




The Oxford Handbook of International Criminal Law


Book Description

In the past twenty years, international criminal law has become one of the main areas of international legal scholarship and practice. Most textbooks in the field describe the evolution of international criminal tribunals, the elements of the core international crimes, the applicable modes of liability and defences, and the role of states in prosecuting international crimes. The Oxford Handbook of International Criminal Law, however, takes a theoretically informed and refreshingly critical look at the most controversial issues in international criminal law, challenging prevailing practices, orthodoxies, and received wisdoms. Some of the contributions to the Handbook come from scholars within the field, but many come from outside of international criminal law, or indeed from outside law itself. The chapters are grounded in history, geography, philosophy, and international relations. The result is a Handbook that expands the discipline and should fundamentally alter how international criminal law is understood.